Blue Heaven

by C. J. Box

  They stopped and listened. Far above them and to the east, Jess could hear a motor and the crunching of gravel under tires. There was the squeak of brakes being applied, a surge of the engine, then another squeak before the motor was killed.

  “They blocked the gate,” Jess said.

  In a swath of moonlight, he could see Villatoro bury his face in his hands in despair.

  Sunday, 11:59 P.M.

  VILLATORO AND HEARNE sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. The shotgun was on the table as well, along with a box of shells. In hushed tones, Villatoro was telling Hearne about the encounter in the trees at Swann’s place, and Hearne kept shooting glances at Jess while he did it. Jess sipped his coffee with his back to the kitchen counter and half listened.

  Annie and William were asleep on the couch in the living room under the same blanket. Monica rifled through Jess’s refrigerator and cupboards looking for ingredients so she could make lasagna, but she couldn’t find noodles or cheese and gave up. She said she wanted to cook something because she was too nervous to sleep.

  “So it’s all coming together,” Hearne said, sitting back as if he were in a loan officers’ meeting. “They robbed Santa Anita, all five of them, and moved up here. Then Rodale screwed up, and they executed him for it, but Annie and William happened to be witnesses. That set everything in motion.”

  Monica had settled on baking a cake, and Jess watched her as she looked again and again at the directions on the back of the cake mix box. He could tell she was distracted, that she was doing something just to be doing it. Who would want to eat cake?

  Villatoro turned to Jess. “What are we going to do? Those men are killers.”

  Hearne said, “The sheriff told me he called the FBI. They’ll be here tomorrow morning. Like Jess said, all we can do is wait it out until we can tell our story. But the ex-cops have probably figured out where you are and who is here,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the sleeping children. “They’ll want to silence them—and us—before we talk.”

  Villatoro looked at his wristwatch. “I wish there was someone we could call.” Celeste should be home and could get the ball rolling urging local law enforcement to contact the FBI or Idaho authorities. Then he thought of Donna, waking her up, telling her what was going on. She would go hysterical. Plus, there was nothing she could do to help. But it was important, he thought, to tell her he loved her. That he always had.

  Jess said, “I wish I knew the names of those ex-cops, the ones who got turned away when they tried to volunteer. I would guess they’d want to help us out. There are plenty of good ones up here, I think. They’d be pretty pissed off if they knew what these guys were doing.”

  While they talked, Jess noticed that Monica kept looking at him as well as Hearne, as if measuring something besides cake mix.

  “Do you have an idea?” Jess asked her.

  She shook her head. “Not about that.” Then she looked hard at him. “Jess, I’d like to talk with you.”

  Jess felt uncomfortable that she was calling him away from Villatoro and Hearne.

  Hearne felt it, too, and said, “Excuse me, I’m going to call my wife. I want her to know I’m safe.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Villatoro said, rising from the table. “You call, then I’ll call Celeste and then my wife.” He said it with a tone that barely disguised what he meant, which was, in case we never see them again.

  “We can step outside,” Jess said to Monica.

  As she started for the mudroom and the door, Hearne turned around with the receiver in his hand. “There’s no dial tone.”

  Jess froze. He knew what that meant.

  Villatoro said, “They’ve cut the line.”

  Jess said to Hearne, “Try your cell phone.”

  “It’s gone,” Hearne said, gesturing with empty hands. “I lost it at Swann’s.”

  “What about you?” Jess asked Villatoro.

  He shrugged. “Mine never worked up here in the first place. Wrong company.”

  “So we’re blocked in, and we can’t communicate,” Jess said flatly. “I’ve had better days.”

  In midsentence, the lights went out. From the living room, Jess heard Annie scream.

  DAY FOUR

  monday

  Monday, 1:24 A.M.

  CARRYING TWO HISSING Coleman lanterns, Jess entered the house from the barn. He put one lantern on the table and held the other up at shoulder height, so he could see the faces of everyone shining back at him. Monica held both William and Annie in front of her. Hearne sat at the table. Villatoro was behind him, holding the shotgun.

  To Hearne, Jess said, “Can you still ride?”

  “I haven’t forgotten how.”

  Jess nodded outside. “Then take Chile into town. She’s still saddled, and that way you can avoid the road. You might be able to get to Sheriff Carey before daylight. Maybe you can convince him to get his men together and get out here.”

  Hearne nodded, went to the gun cabinet, and pulled out another shotgun. “Should I take this?”

  “Yup.”

  Jess turned to Villatoro and the Taylors. “I’m not running. This is my place. I’ll know if they try to come because there’s only one way in with a vehicle.”

  No one said a word. They were waiting for more from him, he realized.

  “I know every inch of this ranch, and they don’t,” Jess said. “That’s our only advantage. We’re going to hold our ground. Don’t worry, I’ve been preparing for it all of my life.”

  “But you’re old, Jess.” It was Annie, who sounded concerned. He didn’t even know she was there.

  “Annie!” Monica said.

  “Hell, let her be.” Jess laughed. “She may be right.”

  AS JESS pulled Chile’s flank strap tight and adjusted the stirrups for the shorter-legged Hearne, the banker said, “Jess, let’s make a pact.”

  Jess finished, turned.

  Hearne said, “If I don’t make it, promise me you’ll take care of Annie and see her through. William and Monica, too.”

  Jess tried to read Hearne’s face, but couldn’t get past the resolve in it.

  “I’ll do the same if something happens here to you,” Hearne said.

  “You trying to tell me something?” Jess asked.

  Hearne simply looked at him, said, “I mean it, Jess.”

  “Then okay,” Jess said after a beat. The pact seemed noble and worthwhile, he thought. He held out his hand, and Hearne shook it.

  “Remember,” Jess said, “trust your horse to find the way in the dark.”

  OUTSIDE, JESS stood with Villatoro on the front porch and watched Jim Hearne wheel on Chile and ride off into the dark. He could hear hoofbeats drum and recede into the meadow.

  Jess handed the weapon he had taken from Swann to Villatoro. “You probably know more about handguns than I do.”

  “I never shot anyone,” Villatoro said.

  “You mean you can’t, or you never have?”

  “I never have.”

  “But you can do it if you need to?”

  Villatoro didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely. Emphatically. Yes, I’m willing. I vowed to myself up in those trees that if I had another chance, I would fight.”

  “Good.” Jess placed his hand on the man’s shoulder in an effort to reassure him.

  Villatoro said, “My wife will never believe this. All those years, and I never had a gun pulled on me. I always wondered what I’d do if that happened, and now I know. I just stood there and waited for the bullet. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  Jess looked up at the saddle slope hill where the access road was, saw no headlights, said, “Don’t be. Everybody freezes up sometime. Look at the bright side—you may get a second chance to get it right.”

  Villatoro chuckled uncomfortably. “Some bright side,” he said.

  Monday, 2:30 A.M.

  MONICA FOUND JESS in the barn, sitting on an upturned bucket, the Winchester across his knees, a lantern hissing and throwing
out warm yellow light. In the stall in front of him was a hugely pregnant cow, legs splayed, tail twitching with pain. She could hear the cow’s shallow breathing.

  “I was wondering where you went,” she said. “I got the kids down again and realized you weren’t in the kitchen. Then I saw the light out here.”

  She wore a heavy canvas ranch coat she had found hanging from a peg in the mudroom. It smelled of campfire smoke and hay.

  Jess looked over at her. “These cows, they don’t pay much attention to the news of the day or our situation. They just keep having little ones no matter what I think about it or how much else I have to do.”

  “I don’t know how you can concentrate on this right now.”

  Jess shrugged. “Doing something normal helps me think.”

  Monica stepped inside the barn, pulling the coat tight against the damp chill. “Is she okay?”

  Jess squinted at the stall. “I’m worried about a breech with this one,” he said. “She had a breech baby last year, so I’m afraid it might happen again.”

  “How close is she?”

  “Any minute,” he said.

  “And if the baby is breech?”

  He held up a long rubber glove. “Then I have to reach in there and pull the calf around so it can come out. If that won’t work, I need to pull it out piece by piece.”

  She flinched and nodded, looking at the moist and inflamed birth canal, then back at the glove.

  “It’s a messy business,” he said, in response to her facial expression, which had given her away. Then he nodded at a bucket near him. “You can sit down, if you’d like. Annie used that bucket last night to watch the same thing.”

  “Annie watched a cow being born?” Monica asked, moving toward the rancher. “How’d she take it? She didn’t say anything to me.”

  “She’s pretty tough,” the rancher said. “She’s a good kid, if you don’t mind me saying that.”

  Monica smiled and sat down. The bucket rocked a little, and she reached out for his arm to steady herself. She noticed how he stiffened at her touch.

  “Of course I don’t mind,” she said, righting her balance. “She really likes you. So does William. He said you should come live with us when this is over.”

  She looked over to gauge his reaction, and was rewarded with a look of surprise that almost made her laugh.

  “He said that?”

  “Yes. He told me when I tucked him in.”

  Jess shook his head, looked down at his dusty boots. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, whether he was flattered or horrified.

  “Jess,” she said, screwing up her courage, “what I wanted to talk to you about before …”

  “Yes?”

  She took in a breath and held it, then blew it out long. “I’ve known a lot of men in my life. I can’t think of one of them who would have done what you did.”

  He wouldn’t look over at her, and she noticed how his ears turned red. He mumbled, “There’s a couple more. One inside the house, and the other on horseback right now.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” she continued. “You’ve risked everything for me, and you never even met me. Annie and William have never had a man like you in their lives before.”

  He continued to stare at the cow. The vein in his temple pulsed. She noticed the wetness in his eyes.

  “Jess, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “What do you think of what I just said?”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s real nice.”

  There was a beat of silence while she waited for more.

  “My wife always said talking was a problem for me,” he said sheepishly.

  She was touched, and she reached for his arm again. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Especially after all you’ve done for us. You brought me together with my children. You don’t need to talk.”

  “I don’t mind talking to you,” he said, his face red. “It’s just that I can’t think of the right words to say.”

  It took her a few moments to summon the courage for what would come next. He picked up on the hesitation, and glanced at her but didn’t stare, making it easier for her. She said, “Jess, there’s something you might want to know. I know there’ve been rumors over the years about me, and I want to clear them up.”

  She said, “Thirteen years ago”—he turned to her as she said the number, a puzzled look on his face—“I was seventeen and I thought I was a pretty hot little number. Actually, I was a hot little number. I wanted to grow up fast. So, along with three friends, we went to Spokane on a Friday night, to the university because we’d been invited to a frat party. At the time, it sounded incredibly adult and exciting … college boys, you know.”

  Jess nodded. It was obvious he was a little uneasy with the story thus far but was too polite not to hear it out to see where it went.

  “Not long after we got there, my friends and I got separated from each other, and even though I was the hot little number, I was a little scared because I was out of my league. There were so many people who knew each other, and a lot of drinking. I’d had way too much myself. Luckily, though, there was a boy I recognized at the party. A boy from around here. Even though we really didn’t know each other very well—he was three years ahead of me in school—it was great to see a familiar face. And he was a very nice boy, very friendly, very handsome. Smart, too. It was exciting. I wanted to find my stupid friends so they could see how well I made out, you know? So he said he’d take me through the frat house and we’d try and find them. And if we couldn’t find them there, we’d go from party to party on campus until we did.”

  She saw Jess shake his head, probably not even realizing he was doing it. Did he disapprove? What? She continued.

  “I was head over heels being with him. I wanted to acquire him, and I wanted him to acquire me. He was an amazing boy, the most charismatic man I’d met other than my dad. He lit up a room when he walked into it, and I wanted him, and I told him so. No college boy can resist that, trust me. That boy and I spent the next two days together locked up in his room. It was magical. You could just look at him and know something big was going to happen with this boy—like he was on the verge of something. I found out later what that was, but at the time I didn’t see it. I don’t think anyone did. Finally, my friends came and found me and practically had to drag me back to the Kootenai Bay.

  “I still wanted to see him, so I called him. I was scared to death that I’d say ‘This is Monica,’ and he’d say ‘Who?’ But when I called the frat house they were evasive. They said he wasn’t there anymore, but they wouldn’t tell me how to reach him. It was weird. At first, I thought they knew who I was, and they were trying to shield him from me, but that didn’t make sense. Then I figured, well, stupid frat boys. He probably left the fraternity and went to another one, and they didn’t want to admit he’d left or something. I started to get worried. So I called the one friend who’d always been there to help me out and told him the situation, that I was scared something had happened to this boy. We drove to Spokane, and that’s when I found out my man had gotten sick …mentally. That he’d had some kind of real severe breakdown the week before and gotten arrested.”

  When she looked at Jess, he was staring at her with an intensity she hadn’t seen before.

  “Jess, the boy was Jess Jr.”

  “He told me he knew you.”

  “Was that all he said?”

  Jess swallowed. “He said you were wild. You aren’t going to tell me Annie is my granddaughter, are you?”

  She hesitated for a beat.

  “No, I’m not. Annie is Jim Hearne’s daughter.”

  Jess was speechless.

  “He was the friend I called to take me to Spokane to try and find out what happened to J.J. He was my father’s best friend, and I think he felt he owed something to me and to you. But one thing led to another. Neither of us planned it, and afterward, Jim felt horrible. He said h
e’d get a divorce if I wanted him to, even though he loved his wife, because he’d betrayed her with his friend’s daughter. I told him never to say that again, and to go home to Laura. I never told him I was pregnant. I let him think the baby—Annie—was J.J’s. But she wasn’t. J.J. never completed the act, but Jim did. So I know for sure. In a way, I think he knows, too, but he’s been too frightened all these years to ask. If you’re wondering why the local banker is on that horse right now, I think you’ve got your answer.”

  “My God,” Jess said. “Now I know what Hearne was trying to tell me.”

  She said, “I’m no victim. He didn’t take advantage of me like it sounds. He gave in to me. I was like that then. But I didn’t want to ruin a good man or bust up a marriage. I had some dignity, I guess. And Annie is such a joy, such a wonderful, wonderful girl. I’m blessed to be her mother. She’s a freak of nature because she’s special, and better than both her parents, I think.”

  She tried to guess what he was thinking. It was as if he couldn’t quite process what she had told him, and she couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

  “I wanted to tell someone so many times,” she said, “but I didn’t. I guess I was waiting for the right time, and that never came. When I was married there was certainly no point. My husband never knew who Annie’s father was. I kept that from him. So it’s amazing to me how things worked out. It’s like there was a reason we were brought together tonight, and the least I could do was let you know.”

  He smiled sadly. “I was kind of hoping you were going to tell me I had a grandchild.”

  “I’m sorry she isn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, excited. “I like ’em just the same.”

  She laughed at that, and he smiled. “Jess, I don’t know how much you’ve heard about me,” she said, seeing his eyes flinch and knowing he had heard, “but I’ve made a vow to myself during all of this that I’m going to keep: My kids come first. If there is anything good at all to come out of all of this, it’s that I’ve learned that lesson. No more Tom Boyds, no more J.J.s, no more Jim Hearnes, no more anyone. Annie and William come first. I’ve made that promise with God.”